Standard Operating Procedure

Standard Operating Procedure (2008)

--Errol Morris

Documentary.

Okay, I'm a fan of Errol Morris, which I think I've made clear from my other reviews, but I really don't know whether I understand why he even made this film after "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib." I can kind of in a perfectionist sense, but at the same time this film retreads much of what had already been said, probably because they interviewed a lot of the same people. I'm not sure which one is better though, Morris' film is much more in-depth, they go through and explain the situations behind the pictures in detail, which "Ghosts" didn't do. Also, this film interviews one of the people in charge of getting confessions that I don't think the other film interviewed and I'm not sure but I don't think "Ghosts" got an interview with Lynndie England (but maybe they did and I've just forgotten, but I really don't think so). Lynndie England was the one who gave the thumbs up in all of her photos, so obviously she was an integral part of what happened.

But what I usually like about Morris' films, didn't work for me in this one. His films are heavilyyyyyyyy stylized (which is why "The Thin Blue Line," which some people think is the best documentary ever [including me? sometimes...] was barred from oscar contention when it came out) and he does lots of things with flashback scenes. Somehow those flashback scenes just didn't seem right in this film, maybe it's because they already had so many images from when it happened in the thousands of pictures that were taken of many of the incidents. All I could think about when watching those scenes was how they faked torturing people and how they got people to put themselves into those positions (the flashbacks were all really abstract, so there were no full-on recreations of any scenes).

The interview with one of the guys who was actually in charge of extracting confessions was one of the good parts of the film. He seemed like a sane, rational guy who made it known that he didn't believe that torture could attain useful confessions and that they didn't get anyyyyyyy intel from any of the people tortured at Abu Ghraib. Also, Morris interviewed the guy (or one of the guys?) who had been in charge of figuring out where the photographs came from and what they were of exactly and making a timeline of events. He explained how they decided what was a criminal act and what was "standard operating procedure." At one point he actually went through some of the photographs and said which fell into which category. It was appalling to see what was considered "standard operating procedure." Mostly it was stripping prisoners, putting underwear on their heads, putting them in "mild" (what is that though?) stress positions. There was also this one photograph that was taken of a man who they had told to stand on a box with electrodes attached to his hands and if he got off he'd be electrocuted, but in reality they just attached random wires or something and he wouldn't have literally been electrocuted. That was considered "standard operating procedure." Niceeeeee, America! Seriously, after watching this how can anyone argue "why" we get attacked?

So yeah, this film was okay. Stylized but interesting. See this and "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" and compare for yourself!